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Microsoft Open Source

Microsoft Open Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux (thenewstack.io) 73

Posted by msmash from the moving-forward dept.
Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) is now open source, Microsoft said Monday. The tool, which allows developers to run Linux distributions directly in Windows, is available for download, modification, and contribution. "We want Windows to be a great dev box," said Pavan Davuluri, corporate VP at Microsoft. "Having great WSL performance and capabilities" allows developers "to live in the Windows-native experience and take advantage of all they need in Linux."

First launched in 2016 with an emulated Linux kernel, WSL switched to using the actual Linux kernel in 2019 with WSL 2, improving compatibility. The system has since gained support for GPUs, graphical applications, and systemd. Microsoft significantly refactored core Windows components to make WSL a standalone system before open sourcing it.

Microsoft Open Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux More | Reply

Microsoft Open Sources Windows Subsystem for Linux

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  • Linux is already a great Dev environment (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Virtucon ( 127420 ) on Monday May 19, 2025 @12:56PM (#65387851)

    As MSFT clings to keeping you on the mothership, we are over here developing real apps on Linux and not worrying about Windows.

    • In the enterprise environment, Microsoft's core applications of Outlook, Teams and Office365 are available as cross-platform web based or PWA applications. I use Ubuntu 22.04 with a KDE Plasma desktop at work and I can access all the MS applications that I need to use on Linux. The days of the Microsoft lockin have dissolved away.

      I don't have a MS Windows system for me to run WSL2 but I don't think that I am missing out. ;-)

      • You access a web version of that MS application, not the actual MS application. Web versions aren't as integrated with the desktop.
        • It can read and write files locally. PWA may be a web wrapper, but it's as near native as i care to get with MS. I can't tell the difference between PWA on linux and o365 native on windows 99.999999999% of the time.

        • Web versions aren't as integrated with the desktop.

          That's the direction in which Microsoft is headed anyway. Teams is now a web application running in a box even when it's allegedly native, for example. And it shows, it's shit. It has all of the classic hallmarks like not correctly detecting when you've read messages so it doesn't have to raise itself for attention, and of leaving mouseover popup bullshit on screen after the mouse has left it, plus long load times and generally poor performance.

          • I hate when I just want to type a pound sign or a greater than sign but teams thinks you want to do something special with it and forces you to select something that it thinks you want. Or the fact that it wants to keep copied links and html components to paste as links or components with no option to paste as plain text.
      • > I don't have a MS Windows system for me to run WSL2 but I don't think that I am missing out.

        For context, I’ve worked with C64-TRS-VAX-DEC-SUN-SGI-DOS-WIN and maybe a couple of others, but primarily Windows.

        WSL probably kept me on Windows longer than I should have stayed. I switched to Fedora this year and now only boot to Windows if I need to find something I forgot to migrate. I would never go back except maybe to a stable developer configuration of XP, 7, or 10. I haven’t even had t

        • Microsoft has been rewriting its legacy applications and plumbing slowly to make more of the Windows ecosystem ready to move on top of a different kernel.

          It will get to the point that less and less of Azure cloud, less and less of the server applications, and less and less of a desktop OS plus business productivity software will be on Win32 Windows API.

          Microsoft SQL Server was moved to run on Linux 8 years ago in 2017.

    • They did WSL totally backward. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:55PM (#65388019)

      Was a mistake to make Windows the host and Linux the guest.

      Gives you all the stability and security Windows is infamous for, with all the ease of use that Linux is infamous for.

      Would have been far better to make Linux the host OS, and Windows the guest UI to replace Gnome.

      • Wish I had mod points, this needs more visibility.

      • It it made for all those Windoze only places where they of course need Linux. A lot of IT departments will not allow anything but Windows on the laptop/desktop for "security" (read: it is the only OS where they can keep control over the user). WSL makes it possible to deny Linux installs but still install it in a MS sanctioned way (therefore safe).

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Locutus ( 9039 )
          hmm, I thought it was because so many Windows devs were installing Linux on the hardware and writing their enterprise apps that way and therefore nothing was traceable. Even running Linux in a virtual machine eliminated Microsoft tracking except for how many times or how long the VM was run. WSL is a whole complete tracking system since it goes into kernel space. Not sure how much tracking WSL2 gives but it's gotta be far more than VMs or directly on the iron.

          BTW, I've seen it personally where people will j

        • read: it is the only OS where they can keep control over the user

          Talking about a corporate setting here, not an individual or home user:

          Have you seen what users do when they're not restricted? As an IT guy, do you want to find yourself fired for gross incompetence because you didn't stop the CFO from inadvertently installing ransomware? You want to discover what it's like to have your company's entire CRM database exposed on the internet because a user replied to something they shouldn't have? In terms of IT, users range from the moderately well-informed to the absolutel

      • I think the same thing. Running linux in windows is like setting up a hospital operating room in the middle of a landfill.

      • Crazy people still think WIndows is like Dos based WIndowsME/98 and thinks have not progressed in a quarter century.

        If Windows was so bad and insecure then why does corporate America use and trust to secure their data and run their apps?

        Linux is not an option for 97% of people as their first time OS. I used to use Linux 25 years ago. Today I want to get work done and run games and have something just work. No nvidia wayland issues. Hardware accelerated smooth scroll and anti alaisgned fonts. Chrome goes bli

        • Corporate America uses Windows because it provides tools for locking down what the users can do, and because nobody gets fired for buying Microsoft. Not because corporate America has some kind of superior comprehension of security or quality.

          I used to use Windows 25 years ago. Today I want to get work done and run games and have something just work. That means Linux all the way. Nothing else has the stability and performance, and most of all, allows me to use all the skills I've amassed over half a century.

        • Re:They did WSL totally backward. (Score:4, Interesting)

          by nosfucious ( 157958 ) on Tuesday May 20, 2025 @06:07AM (#65389755)

          "If Windows was so bad and insecure then why does corporate America use and trust to secure their data and run their apps?"

          Because of a committent to backwards compatibility. So long as one doesn't jump of MS fad of the week, Windows programs just keep working. (ok mostly, but not always).

          VB for Applications (some monster Excel or Access program) mostly just work between versions. And compiled apps.

          So a one time investment in Line of Business apps can deliver value of multiple decades.

          (Yes, there are exceptions, 16 bit apps no longer work in 64 bit Windows, for example, but probably can be ported easily. Relying on a specific framework will probably mean unsupported at one point as well).

          As Yoda might say "The Corporate World USES Windows, but trust, it does not*

      • What, like Wine? VMware?

      • I used Linux as my desktop exclusive for about twenty years. Jumped ship to Windows because I wanted a convertible laptop (specifically a Surface) and the Linux experience was pretty terrible. Didn't handle high-DPI displays well (it required making separate config tweaks for GTK+ and QT, and per-app for other toolkit), didn't handle multi-point touchpads well, didn't support the digitizer, didn't handle display geometry changes cleanly, etc, etc.

        They didn't even have WSL at the time, but since the majori

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      And Linux makes a terrible desktop.

    • And clearly you're very proud of your choice of OS. Which is only natural, because...

      ...

      ...?

  • Where is the repository?

    Under which license did MS release WSL?

  • It is not like they open sourced Windows. They open sourced a small appendage of a proprietary system as an attempt to lure users into the proprietary system. Their code is useless without a Windows license.

    • Re:Does it matter? (Score:5, Funny)

      by OrangAsm ( 678078 ) on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:21PM (#65387905)

      Damn, I was hoping to run in under Wine on Linux.

      • My initial thoughts were along these lines, you may jest, but developers working on modern things have mostly moved on from Windows, so it would make more sense for MSFT to focus on WINE compatibility.

        Azure brings in the big money, so focusing on Windows is a lost venture now (Windows 10 was meant to be the last).

    • It COULD (in theory, at least) get directly cabbaged up by something like ReactOS though.

      MIT allows re-licensing under new terms (GPL Primacy), IIRC.

      Whether or not ReactOS is .... Mature enough.... (giggle)... to accept the newly opened code as a viable POSIX subsystem provider is another matter entirely, however.

      Still, Gift horses and mouths, and all that.

    • "Their code is useless without a Windows license."

      Probably, but as they have used a permissive license, if there are parts in there that are good for other purposes they will be usable.

  • Virtual Machine (Score:3)

    by akw0088 ( 7073305 ) on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:23PM (#65387907)
    I thought WSL was a virtual machine after the update that improved performance over their API hook kernel? So essentially Virtual box, but tied to windows and powershell
    • It is just a Virtual Machine. If you want a real subsystem for Linux under Windows, you still have to install Cygwin.

      • Cygwin is not at all Linux under Windows. Not only is it not Linux based, but a whole lot of software written on Linux won't even compile for it. That's probably a large part of why WSL exists.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by jonwil ( 467024 )

      It is a VM but it has a lot of special bits that allow much better integration with Windows than running a standard Linux distro in a standard VM would give you (and its these that are being made open source)

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      It is a VM running on Hyper-V, but the Linux kernel is customized so the performance is near native. In benchmarks it's usually between 0 and 3% slower than native Linux. It is also less isolated than a typical VM, sharing memory with Windows, having access to local drives and other resources.

  • Shouldn't it be called (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Valgrus Thunderaxe ( 8769977 ) on Monday May 19, 2025 @01:24PM (#65387917)
    Linux subsystem for Windows?
    • It's a Windows Subsystem that provides Linux, in addition to the Windows Subsystem that provides Win32, and the old Windows Subsystem that provided Unix, and the Windows Subsystem that provided OS/2.

      If NT had ended up with as many supported APIs as VMS had, we'd probably find the term mundane.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Bert64 ( 520050 )

        WSLv1 was.
        WSLv2 is just a vm running in hyper-v with some paravirt hooks to allow better integration with the host, similar to what vmware or parallels has had for years.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Locutus ( 9039 )
        And yet none of those were called "Windows Subsystem for _____"
        The naming was designed to get hits and to confuse management. Developers were showing management what could be done with Linux for very little cost and getting approval for Linux systems to develop on. Windows Subsystem for Linux makes it sound like they can run Linux and still have access to Windows when it was bass ackwards. IMHO

        LoB

    • Linux subsystem for Windows?

      You misspelled "wine".

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by allo ( 1728082 )

      That's the company that puts its 32-bit libraries in a folder called WOW64 while the 64-bit libraries are in the system32 folder.

      • It's the company that does this because it's easier to do something that doesn't impact users than deal with developers who can't handle the change. Open source people would approve. Go tell Linus that you want to make a change that breaks the userspace and watch him tear you a new arsehole.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by allo ( 1728082 )

          You're completely missing the point.

          The problem is the naming. They put 32-bit libraries in a folder named WOW64 and 64-bit libraries in a folder named System32 and call a Linux that runs on Windows "Windows Subsystem for Linux".

    • Linux subsystem for Windows?

      No. You're confusing what the "subsystem" is. It's not the guest OS being sub to the host, but rather it's talking about the components that enable alternate system calls the kernel layer. These days you may be forgiven since WSL2 is a bit more than Hyper-V, but WSL1 was a dedicated subsystem communicating to the NT kernel in much the same way as the Win32 subsystem did.

      The naming is consistent with other such components such as Windows Subsystem for Android along with the modern marketing to put "Windows"

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by kriston ( 7886 )

        WSL1 was a dedicated subsystem communicating to the NT kernel in much the same way as the Win32 subsystem did

        Which made WSL 1 have higher performance and native access to Windows subsystems, just like the Win32, WoW64, and OS/2 subsystems do. It used a system specifically made for Windows NT to efficiently and reliably host multiple operating systems without emulation or virtualization.

        I feel like WSL 2 with its weird Linux kernel and hypervisor hacks to allow direct access to Windows subsystems is a huge step backward in reliability and performance.

    • It is grammatically correct. It is a subsystem of Windows. "Linux subsystem for Windows" would be something in Linux for running Windows.

  • Some of us have to use Windows for one reason or another at least part time. WSL is totally awesome for those times! I am glad it exists. And now it is getting an opensource license makes it even better.

    • I have been working for a long time and there was only around 5 years in my entire career that the workstation was linux. The rest of the time it was windows.

  • Personally, I am more interested in WSL 1 than WSL 2, and would like to find out if they have open sourced the former. Either way, congratulations to Microsoft for sharing this with the world, as they did with .NET Core and a couple other things I can recall previously.

  • For me, at least, it'd be more useful for Microsoft to open-source (or at least make it "free as in beer") Windows - that way I could live the Linux-native (or Mac-native) experience and "take advantage of all I need in Windows" (which is not all that often).

    Regardless - kudos to Microsoft for this move.

  • As a long-time Window, Linux, and Mac user, and with the implementation of Windows Recall spyware, I am concerned that even a Linux drive connected to a machine that also runs Windows that data may be searched and gathered from it. I am trying to work out a system that when I need to use the Windows software I own, that only the data it needs to see--is the only data it sees. Perhaps Windows Subsystem for Linux will add to that threat.

    California's District Attorney should investigate Microsoft's Recall sp
  • Even though the source is out there--does it build the same?

  • Link? (Score:2)

    by allo ( 1728082 )

    It seems that neither Slashdot nor the original article link a repo? What is an article about an open source project without a link to the source?

  • Why is it called "Windows Subsystem for Linux" and not "Linux Subsystem for Windows" ?

    • This is discussed upthread, where it's suggested that the name was intentionally chosen to create confusion. It is definitely 100% backwards.

      • It is a subsystem of Windows for handling some particular thing. Thus, Windows Subsystem for Linux. It is grammatically correct. If you reverse it, you instead refer to Wine - a subsystem added to Linux to support Windows binaries.

        • It is a subsystem of Windows for handling some particular thing. Thus, Windows Subsystem for Linux.

          No. "Windows subsystem for Linux" implies that it's a subsystem pertaining to windows which is for Linux, i.e. runs on it. "Linux subsystem for Windows" would be what you claim. Your understanding would make sense with the word order used in Spanish, not in English.

    • Because of how English grammar works. "Linux subsystem for ..." is a subsystem of Linux, not Windows. WSL is a part of Windows, hence "Windows Subsystem", that handles Linux binaries, hence "for Linux".

  • Now you can get the great development environment of Linux and at the same time be subjected to the instability and intrusive surveillance features that Windows is famous for! Is a breakthrough.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Locutus ( 9039 )
      THIS. WSL was designed for surveillance and tracking for marketing purposes. Remember what Monkey Boy said? Developers developers developers!

      LoB
    • You mean auditing in a secure environment?
  • Since now Windows can run any Linux software, all software should be made for Linux. Valve should require it for all new game All open source packagers should do likewise. And banks. And everyone else. Then we will finally herald the Year of Desktop Linux!

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